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Jul 11, 2006

Bot from Panama

I received an email from Dylan in Panama:

"I'd like to submit my very first creation and quite possibly the first in all of Panama. A sound activated camera. I builtit snugly around my Casio Exilim EX-Z3. The design is very simple and the program is even simpler: when it hears a sound the motor rotates gently for 2 seconds moving the triggering arm down toward the shutter button, then the motor rotates 20 degrees back to original position."

I'd also like to be able to take a remote picture on my Bluetooth-enabled phone via the NXT. Filip Verhaeghe had a great post on how this could be done with an example using Hyperterm(http://www.bnxt.com/blog/2006/02/how-to-use-bluetooth-to-take-pictures.html), but I believe it assumes that the NXT supports a normal COM port through the Bluetooth Serial Port Profile. It doesn't appear to do this currently. Instead it has a communication protocol that involves mailboxes. Has anyone figured out how to accomplish this?

There are some applications for cell phones and PDAs that allow you to control the motors via "direct commands" (functioning under the level of the NXT-G software). You could easily use something like this to run something like Dylan's PhotographerBot to ake a single picture. As to "cracking the mailbox", I'm not sure anyone has done this cleanly yet.

"High-speed" imaging using multishot mode, hmm... or more than one camera side by side, for higher speed (mechanically link the pushbuttons) or moving stereogram images...

There was an application of the RCX I remember, where it would snap a picture every time a bird stepped on a feeding platform. But now, you could do that with US sensor completely remotely from the actual birdfeeder, and so be able to retrofit this "Birding" robot to any existing birdfeeder. Dylan, want to send the blog some automated pictures of Panamanian birds?

Something happened to the URL. let's try agian shall we.http://mindstorms.lego.com/MeetMDP/Martyn.aspxCopy and past the two together. Or just go to the official mindstorms website, select "meet the MDPs" and select Martyns.

If anyone can explain how to get a Sony Ericsson P910a to take pictures commanded via bluetooth

This needs a program to be written for the phone. I guess the Java APIs will support this, but I would use the UIQ SDK from Sony Ericsson's website and program it in C++.

To do this under control of the NXT requires knowledge of the mailbox protocol. I will probably do something about this when Lego publish their firmware, as they have indicated that they will do. I wont be able to test anything I do until NXTs start reaching UK shores in mid/late September.

Thanks for the link. I am able to send a message from the PC to the NXT mailbox and then read it back using NeXTTool, but I have not been successful in sending a message from the NXT to the PC (due to the mailbox protocol?).

I'll have to try with my Sony Ericsson phone, but I don't see how that would work either since it supports the normal Serial Port Profile which NXT doesn not seem to support directly.

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